"Laura in kitchen." That's how Gavin greeted Laura this morning. She was, indeed, in the kitchen. Barefoot, even, which is against the rules. We're getting our kitchen redone and so Gavin is not allowed in there without shoes. So far he's been really good about this, though this morning he opted for a pair of Stacy's shoes, black flats with a colorful floral print. They were a little gaudy, though I think that was due in large part to their size. He also insisted on wearing his pink gardening gloves. I've been searching all summer for kids' gardening gloves and I finally found some at CVS. Pink gloves with a "Princess" Disney logo on the back were the only options. They go well with Gavin's pink toy broom, mop, and dustpan that his Grandpa Kathy bought for him at Target. God forbid we make household chore toys gender neutral. What a shame it would be for kids of both genders to learn how to keep a house clean. A heterosexual dude might actually pick up his own socks off the floor or mop the kitchen. And we can't have that. Otherwise, what would straight women have left to bitch about?
Speaking of domestic duties, I sprained my thumb today putting on the couch slipcover. I know, I'm wild. I was tucking the fabric around the cushion and put my full weight into it. Lo and behold my thumb was trapped in a fold of fabric that held it like a sling while the rest of my hand plunged into the couch. I heard a terrible crunch sound and an immediate wave of pain that made me feel like I was going to puke. Basically my thumb folded over backwards at the joint where it meets my hand. I've had an ice pack on it for hours, but it still hurts if I bend my thumb or try to use it for anything thumbs are used for (picking things up, for example). I also hurt my back, though I'm not sure what triggered it today. But a few weeks ago I hurt my back opening a window. Today it hurts like that again, but I didn't do anything so daring and risky. I think I'm just getting old.
I spent the past couple of nights in a hotel room in Lansing with Stacy and Gavin. Stacy had a work-related conference to attend and I figured it would be fun to go with her. Kind of a dry run for Gavin since we'll be spending a week in a hotel in Mexico. Gavin was a trooper. He slept and napped really well in the Pack and Play the hotel provided. This bodes well for Mexico. On Thursday while Stacy was at the conference Gavin and I went to the Potter Park Zoo where we saw spider monkeys, peacocks, a wolf, a lion, and some bald eagles. We also saw a tiger and a snow leopard super up close. The enclosures are much closer to the people at the Potter Park Zoo than at the Detroit Zoo and both the tiger and snow leopard came right up to the front while we were there. You can't, like, touch them or anything. Well, I mean, I guess you could, but you'd have to go over the little railing and then reach through the enclosure fence. We refrained. We did, however, touch goats in the petting zoo portion of the park. The only animals there to be petted were goats. There was a little vending machine -- you know, the kind you usually see in the lobby of an old credit union or VFW hall filled with Skittles and/or shelled peanuts -- that you could put a quarter in and get food pellets to feed them. I didn't have any change so Gavin almost missed out on that experience but a nice little girl (she was, like, 10 maybe) handed him a couple of pellets that had fallen on the ground under the machine. While it was against the rules to feed the goats inside of the enclosure, we did it anyway because that's where we were. Gavin fed two goats and then dropped the third pellet. To my horror he recovered it and tried feeding it to a very disinterested goat. Disinterested, I suppose, because Gavin was offering him goat poo, not food. And then before I could use the proffered hand sanitizer dispenser, Gavin stuck his thumb in his mouth. So far we have yet to have cause to tell the story of how Gavin got rotavirus at the zoo.
By Friday morning Gavin had enough of Lansing. When I asked him if he wanted to go to the science museum he responded, "Go home." Sadly for him, that was not an option as we still had a morning to kill before his nap time. So I took him to the Impression 5 Science Center in downtown Lansing. It's an interesting place. They have a room called First Impressions that's for babies and toddlers but that room had a class going on when we first got there so we checked out the rest of the museum first. The museum is in an old building with work and creaky wood floors and, from what I could tell, no air conditioning. This was especially evident in the room with giant bubble wands and stuff, including a platform you could stand on and pull a rope so that you were standing inside a huge bubble tube. There's something similar at the Ann Arbor hands on museum, though I don't recall the platform being covered in bubble solution before. In any case, it meant a lot of bubble solution tracked onto the floor. It would have been a slippery mess had they not put down rugs. Unfortunately, the combination of humid weather and bubble soaked rugs made the bubble room smell pretty terrible. I redirected Gavin's attention as soon as possible. Things that had been touted in a Michigan for kids' guidebook I have weren't all that in real life. The giant heart model, for example, didn't hold my or Gavin's attention. The place were you throw stuff was difficult to navigate and did not have clear instructions. But the First Impressions room made up for all of that. It was one of the nicest, cleanest, most kid-friendly play place I've ever brought Gavin to. Totally worth the price of admission if you have a wee one. Gavin had a blast there and he didn't even make it over to the water table section, which is one of the room's highlights. There's a big wooden play structure with two slides, a kid-sized toy house with a kitchen and other domesticities, plenty of toys and games and blocks and dolls. Like many places where babies and toddlers climb and play, it's a shoe-free zone, which I totally understand but since it was summer almost everyone, including me, was barefoot. If only I always kept an extra pair of socks for me stashed in his diaper bag. So far no sign of any disgusting foot diseases.
Probably the best part of the day was eating lunch with Gavin outside of the science museum. I'd pilfered bread, jelly, and peanut butter from the morning's continental breakfast and assembled some sandwiches for us. I packed some dried apple snack for Gavin ("apple chips" he calls them. We both do). We ate on the yellow bench next to a model of the sun in the museum's huge scale model of the solar system. Gavin sat in front of me and leaned back, happy to take a breather from the whirlwind of the past two days. But it was the sweetest lunch I've eaten in a long time.
I feel lucky that Gavin is affectionate. He woke me up this morning with a hug and a kiss. Such a sweet boy.
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